Everything is never stagnant. The earth never cease to rotate, seismic movements never stop to create devastating earthquakes, and for all other natural workings of life, including the involuntarily trudging to work in the mornings, life has never been able to ever appear exactly the same. Similar, but never congruent. As history puts it, something done can never be undone. Placing something back to its original position will never be the same as untouching the object. And even if u categorically deny all these changes in life, there is one domain for sure, which will incontrovertibly move on, even if u hate to. And that’s time. And probably for what I’ve said so much, you would recognize that the only probably rule that never change is change itself.
In the ever changing sphere of life, I would like to question the existence of the word “routine”. It seems like the word monotonous is a misnomer. Standard Operating Procedures, or SOP, for all organizations who employ this term, is very much falsified. There can never be a standard way to respond to a different scenario that occurs everyday. Adaptability sounds more correct. It is uncommon to hear grievances that work is dull and boring. And believe ever so deeply that it is inherently so. Why not take a look at interesting jobs then? These “palatable tasks” that sparks our excitement has found a way to sow seeds of satisfaction and joy, and thus we innately believe so. These sparks are generated very easily as a matter of fact, because we perceptibly welcome it. We open the gate to the gardener who sows the seeds. And this explanation is for the positive responses about work being engaging, exciting, likeable.
So how is routine work founded on? It occurs when our attention giving to a specific task stagnates at a particular unchanged purpose, thereby generating a responsive mechanism to an “outdated bug” which resides in our mind. It dictates our mind to view it in a repetitive way, that we are doing something that what we have already done many times. It focuses on the frequency, and not on the quality. And being an insidious bug, it soon spreads like wildfire, infecting our emotions, our perceptions, and sadly, our action. We find it hard to resist defiant acts of demonstration against routine activities, and our pent-up desire to rid these “routine” works simply adds fuel to the fire.
So the fundamental reason why humans dread routine is because we don’t recognize changes. We don’t inject differences to our lives. We don’t identify ourselves with different purposes of doing a common daily chore. We don’t give ourselves a chance to relook things from different perspectives. We are so reluctant to changes. If you realize, we made a grave mistake. We did not obey the sacred rule, the rule that never changes.
2 comments:
Very interesting perception of change. However, I would like to contest the point on SOPs and Routine.
My contention is that, despite the invariable occurrence of changes injected into systems, there is a need to formulate SOPs and Routines.
During the formulation of such Standard Operating Procedures, one would definitely have to consider all possibilities discernible and tackle these different scenarios one by one. Much like defensive programming in Computer Programming, the SOPs seek to enumerate all possible problems that may arise and provide guidance to individuals in such circumstances. It is a means by which experience from the progenitors is systematically passed on to the descendants.
Despite the possibility of breeding contempt in the generations who take over from these SOPs, the very existence of such SOPs is clearly justified. Take the SAF for example. Officers often the TSR (Training Safety Regulations) when planning for activities such as IPPT. The TSR itself is much like an SOP of safety measures. It is aptly described as written in the blood of those who have sacrificed to denude the loopholes present in the safety measures currently in place. Thus, the formulation, modification and rectification of the SOPs is what makes SOPs adapt to changes. It is imperative that the generations which take over these SOPs to examine, adopt and ensure the continual perpetual updating of these SOPs.
These SOPs, theoretically, evolve along with the changing organisation, circumstances, and people. Thus, SOPs aren't stagnant unlike other texts such as the bible.
Sorry for such a long comment. I hope i make some sense in my arguments.
hey, u're name is clong too? thats cool.. are you the malaysian guy who tagged me?
yea i do agree with u to a large extent! haha maybe i didnt really specify my definition of "SOP" used in the context of my post. It was more of really "stagnancy" than any other meanings. I do agree with you that SOPs and Routines are constantly revised and reviewed. That is imperative for the survivability of a individual, a country, and our universe. Haha, hence my post on the ultimate rule of change :)
I really appreciate for the effort u put in for these comments. Its definitely not very long as u think, in fact it was pleasurable reading them. Probably we can exchange our views more often!
Oh btw, do u have a blog too?
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